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I’m not a tuna fan. Opening a can of tuna is one of my least favorite things to do in the kitchen. My husband, however, is a huge fan. HUGE. We have very different tastes, to put it mildly. One day he came home with tuna salad from the Whole Foods deli. He remarked about how amazing it was and how I should try it. I did. For tuna salad, it was pretty good. Then I saw the price.

$10,99 a pound. Seriously!?!? Are there gold flakes in it? I pay less for steak! That’s right, you can go to the meat counter and get a nice steak for less money. And I’m paying more for tinned tuna? Consider the gauntlet thrown. Can I make this cheaper? Yes, I can! Even using dolphin safe, pole caught, made in America tuna. Although, this recipe would be much, much cheaper using less expensive tuna. Not that I would. I’m all for made in America.

First, I had to deconstruct the Whole Foods salad. Corporate espionage, if you will. The tuna was definitely higher end, and the salad was studded with olives. Where go olives, there are usually capers. The usual suspects of onion and celery were there in the salad as well. Seriously, this was no big deal. And, I got to customize it. My husband likes a wet salad, so I added lemon. I also added garlic powder. I’m not a fan of biting into raw garlic. Finish the whole thing off with some mayo, salt and pepper, and….. mission accomplished!

These measurements are relative. It’s not like you can really mess this salad up. If you like more onion or celery, by all means you more!

Combine the tuna, celery, onion, olives, capers and garlic powder in a bowl. Break up the chunks of tuna if they are too large. Add mayonnaise until you reach your preferred consistency. Sample the salad and salt and pepper to taste.

I’ve done a Peanut Butter Cream Pie in a previous blog post. You can see it here. Why do it again? One: it’s Peanut Butter Cream Pie. The question is why not do it again. The previous pie was a dense, sinful confection. This version is whisper light and airy, but don’t be fooled. This pie contains a whopping 4 cups of whipping cream. You read that correctly. 2 cups in the pie, 2 cups on top. YUM! Add to that 8 ounces of cream cheese and some peanut butter and you have a calorie extravaganza.

On the plus side, making this pie is incredibly easy. It’s seriously no bake, and it doesn’t have to sit in the fridge for hours. The pie is perfect for a pot luck, or a thrown together dessert just because. The recipe is very novice cook friendly, and definitely within the abilities of younger budding chefs, provided they can use a mixer safely.

I had this pie at one of Emeril Legasse’s restaurants in New Orleans. Before he became a mega start and the BAM! guy, I actually met him. Granted, he was on Food Network, when they actually cooked on that network. But, not many cable companies had the channel (mine didn’t!). He very nicely came out to my table to autograph a cookbook my father and I bought for my mother. The food was spectacular that night, but meeting and conversing with him was tremendous. Despite the passage of time, the memories of the pie stuck with me. Light, airy, yet rich and creamy all at the same time. Truly the perfect ending to a summer cookout. When I was recently invited to a cookout, I brought this pie.

I made just a few changes to this recipe in the margins, but there’s no denying my inspiration was Emeril’s pie. For the original recipe, click here. Some general notes, though. I love natural peanut butter because mostly I hate transfat. However, you need the “no stir” natural peanut butter for this recipe to really work. Also, I always use Philadelphia brand Cream Cheese.

In a mixing bowl, combine the cream cheese, sugar and peanut butter. Mix until light and creamy. Add the heavy cream and mix well. Fold in half of the whipped cream. Whip the ingredients together with whip attachment on the mixer to thoroughly combine.

Spread peanut butter mixture into pie shell. Refrigerate for at least an hour, until set. Top with remaining whipped cream and chocolate shavings.

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I miss pasta. I really, really, really do. Really, really good mac and cheese that is homemade is so luscious, rich, thick and, well, sinful.

Does this recipe replicate it? Eh. It’s rich and it’s creamy. But is cauliflower ever going to be confused with quality pasta? No. On the other hand, there’s no bloat from carb overloading and no out of control blood sugar responses. All things considered, this is an amazing vegetable side dish!! You’ve got a ton of cauliflower in a form that people will eat. Two pounds of frozen cauliflower barely escapes a dinner with four diners. Crazy for cauliflower. Honestly, we love this dish. I make this all the time. It’s quick, the ingredients are available year ’round, and even the kids eat it!

Also, it uses up some random items that I always have laying around: shredded cheese and sour cream. Taco night never seems to use all these items up.

Some caveats about this recipe. I make real mac and cheese and feel that this recipe should be no different. Take your low fat cheese, your Greek yogurt, your low fat yogurt, chicken stock and whatever other “lighteners” you have and don’t put them in here. You have already subbed out the pasta. Live a little and splurge. Seriously.

Also, keep in mind that the sauce is covering two pounds of cauliflower. Cauliflower is very, very wet. Especially when baked. It’s the opposite of pasta, instead of absorbing sauce, the cauliflower will be adding water to the sauce. So, this sauce will be very thick and rather over spiced. If you were to try a bit of the sauce, you would immediately think: too much salt, the woman is crazy. Oh, wait, the cayenne just hit!! Now it’s too spicy. And too thick. Don’t think those things until you’ve baked the whole concoction. If you cut back on the spices, your dish will be incredibly bland. If you waiver on the sauce and think it needs to be a touch thinner, it will won’t be thick and creamy at finish. It’s a delicate balance that will only reveal its perfection at the very end.

Place the cauliflower and water in a saucepan and cook the cauliflower until it’s not frozen anymore. You don’t want the cauliflower to be too soft because it is being cooked again in the oven. Thoroughly drain the water out of the pan.

In a small sauce pan, melt butter over medium heat. Add flour and stir for about 1-2 minutes. Add the milk and stir until really thick. Add the salt, cayenne, and mustard powder. Stir until well incorporated, and remove from heat. Add the sour cream and stir well. Add the cheese and stir until melted through.

I suppose at this point, I should tell you to pour the sauce over the cauliflower and stir well. It’s bad enough to clean the sauce out of the small pan, why make more work and have to clean it out of the cauliflower pan too? So, I put the cauliflower in the greased baking dish and pour the sauce over the cauliflower there. I then stir the mixture together until well blended and add cheese for the topping.

Cook until bubbling and the cheese is melted and just starting to brown.

I needed something to bring to a breakfast meeting for a group of, I guess you could say, community organizers. It’s a group of awesome women who meet to throw my community’s big 4th of July celebration. As a food blogger, I feel a certain bit of pressure to bring something great. Not just good, but amazing. Most people aren’t low carb, so I choose to splurge at these events. Hunting for something to bring, I came across something called a “breakfast casserole”. Essentially it was bread, eggs, cheese and ham. Eh. Just didn’t speak to me. But it got me thinking. How could I put a Cajun spin on it? I love all things Cajun. So, I began by subbing out the bread for cornbread, the ham for blazing hot andouille sausage, added onion, green pepper and garlic and BAM! Cajun Breakfast Souffle.

This dish is easy, and can be made ahead and assembled the next morning. It’s pretty great reheated, too. It travels well. This is the perfect “bring to brunch” dish. I cannot emphasize the ease of this dish. The only hard part is deciding whether you are making the cornbread or not. I opted to make the cornbread from a boxed mix, but you could easily buy cornbread and make it work in this recipe. I know that boxed mixes aren’t fantastic (in my defense, there were all natural ingredients), but I can’t get my cornbread recipes to work. I’m cornbread challenged.

Grease a 2-2 1/2 quart baking dish. Place cornbread into dish and set aside.

In a skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onion, pepper and andouille and cook until the onion is translucent and the green peppers are soft. Stir occasionally. Add the garlic, salt and peppers. Incorporate the spices. Set aside to slightly cool.

In a small mixing bowl, combine the eggs and the milk. Add the cheese and stir until incorporated.

Spread the pepper and sausage mixture over the cornbread. Evenly pour the milk mixture over the whole concoction.

Bake, uncovered, for about an hour, or until the edges are bubbling and the top begins to just brown. If you are unsure about whether the souffle is done, push a knife into the center of the dish. If it comes out clean, your dish should be finished.

Make ahead notes: You can make the cornbread ahead of time (or cut it into squares ahead of time), as well as the pepper mixture. Store the cornbread in an airtight container and place the pepper mixture in the refrigerator over night until you are ready to make the dish. You can also let the egg mixture “soak into” the cornbread for an hour or so before baking.

I have a love hate relationship with breakfast. All of the best “breakfast” food is chock full of carbs. As someone who shouldn’t be indulging in carbs, this presents a lot of problems. Breakfast is where one can shamefully eat something that’s a dessert and call it a “meal”. You can’t get away with waffles, pancakes, or French toast at lunch. But breakfast? No problem. Bacon and fatty sausage are paired with such indulgences and it’s perfectly acceptable. What other meal can pull this off? Not one. You have a side of bacon at dinner, you better be eating “breakfast for dinner”. Breakfast is such an anomaly. Eggs and sausage is one person’s low carb breakfast and another person’s health nightmare. On the flip side, one person’s oatmeal is a heart healthy breakfast for some people, but a low carb eater’s horror show.

In other meals, you just don’t get so much controversy. The other meals have a sense of balance. You could be low carb and low calorie/fat with a salad. Or grilled fish or chicken. There is more overlap and options for all types of eaters.

My kids LOVE breakfast. Doughnuts, waffles, pancakes, french toast, regular toast and muffins are all begged for in large quantities. From a practical standpoint, I love waffles and muffins. They keep well, make lots in a short amount of time, and can be reheated easily for breakfast during the week. Add a breakfast meat cooked the night before and reheated and morning breakfasts are a breeze. But, the kids grow tired of repetition and insist on pancakes. I am just not a fan. The first batch comes out meh and it takes FOREVER to cook them. Until, of course, the pan becomes too hot, then the pancakes burn. Saving them for another day? Unless you are going to cut squares of parchment out and place them between each pancake, better not freeze or refrigerate them. They meld into a large mass never to be separated again. My waffles have never betrayed me in such an unforgivable manner. Ditto my muffins.

But, the heart wants what it wants. Plus, I had sour cream to spare. And maybe one of my kids was boycotting waffles and guilt wouldn’t let me send her to school with nothing in her stomach. So, I when I came across a really old recipe for sour cream pancakes (1850s!), I caved. As an aside, I love when people write about how they “thought” to add sour cream to anything and call it new or improved. Um, people have been cooking for a really, really long time. Unless this is some kind of crazy pancake foam or sous vide, it’s not new.

In The Great Western Cookbook by Angelina Maria Collins, written for Western Housewifes, Mrs. Collins details her very own pancake recipe in one titled: Mrs. Collins’ Batter Cakes. I was particularly interested in this recipe as it would make use of my left over sour cream. I made tacos, and you just don’t need that much sour cream for tacos. I ALWAYS have leftover sour cream.

The recipe is fairly modern, as Mrs. Collins used several interesting techniques, for the time, to make very light pancakes. First, she separated the eggs, and whipped the whites “until frothy”. Aerated egg whites, if the bubbles are left intact through careful folding into the pancake batter, will create a very airy confection. She also employed some chemical assistance. In the days before baking powder or soda, there was, for a brief time, “saleratus”. Instead of sodium bicarbonate (modern baking soda), saleratus was usually potassium bicarbonate. Using a bicarbonate with sour cream, which is acidic, and heat would also create air bubbles, also helping to lighten the pancake. Nowadays, people largely rely on baking powder or soda alone to lighten the pancakes.

The recipe also included all the usual suspects in such a concoction: flour, eggs, and milk:

Take four eggs, beat them separately, and to the yolks add of pint of rich milk, beat in enough flour to make it into a thick batter. Put in a tea-cupful of sour cream, a tea-spoonful of saleratus; add this to the batter, mix in lightly the white of the eggs, beaten to a froth, and bake on a hot griddle like buckwheat cakes.

I’ve updated it slightly to include a bit of salt and vanilla and changed some of the ratios because, well, “enough flour” just isn’t a really good descriptor for a blog recipe, is it?

In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking soda and salt. Set aside.

In a small mixing bowl, combine the sour cream, whole milk, egg yolks, melted butter and vanilla. In a separate bowl, Whip the egg yolks until soft peaks form.

Add the sour cream mixture to the flour mixture and just combine (batter will be lumpy and that’s ok). Gently fold in the egg whites. If desired, fold in the blueberries.

In large non-stick pan, or flat griddle, melt enough butter over medium heat to coat the pan. I like to use clarified butter or ghee for this step, but butter works well. You may need to add more as you work through the batches. It just has to be watched because it has a tendency to burn. When the griddle is evenly heated, add about a 1/4th a cup of batter to the griddle. When the top of the pancake is dotted with bubbles and the bottom is brown, flip over and cook for another minute or so. Remove from the griddle and serve. Alternatively, put the oven on low (170-200 degrees Fahrenheit), and keep the pancakes in the oven until needed.

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My son and I went to an Italian chain restaurant and he had the soup of the day. That day, it was creamy tomato basil soup. He completely fell in love with it and asked if he could make it at home. Of course! I told him to “google” it and see what if he could find a recipe that he wanted to try. He did and it was really amazing. There are a few ingredients that gave me pause.

I like to rant and my rant today is about flour based soups. I understand the desire to have a creamy soup with great mouth feel. I really do. But the line between creamy soups and gloppy mess is very fine. One time my kid ordered the cream of crab soup at a local crab shack. The soup was uninspired goop. When he placed his spoon back into the soup bowl, it actually just sat on top of the soup. It didn’t sink. At all. Of all the ingredients in cream of crab soup, flour is probably among the least expensive. So, I can see the desire to maximize the use of flour in soup from a profit motive. On the other hand, yuck. Why must thick = good when it comes to creamy soup?

So I was skeptical about the use of flour in this recipe. I’m going to work with this recipe and see if I can come up with something else. However, I should mention, this soup is really sublime. It’s very balanced and just wonderful.

As a bonus, this recipe is super easy for kids to make. My son made this with little to no help from me. It’s a big impact dish, with very little fuss.

Cooking Instructions:
1. In a large soup pot, melt butter over medium-heat. Add onions and saute until translucent. Add thyme, roasted garlic and garlic puree. Continue to cook for approximately 3 minutes more. Reduce heat and add flour. Mix with whisk until flour is incorporated. Cook 2 minutes more.
2. Add the chicken stock and marinara and bring to a boil. Add salt, pepper and heavy whipping cream and simmer for 15 minutes, skimming the impurities that rise to the surface.
3. Using a food processor, puree all the ingredients together, strain and add basil. We used an immersion blender for this step. Made it much, much easier. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

4. Garnish with 1 tsp of julienned basil per bowl.

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See those things? Right up there? They scared me. Seriously, what are they? Fruit? Vegetable? Starch? Don’t make the mistake of thinking they are tomatoes. They are not. No. Just no. They aren’t just wrapped green tomatoes. I think these are the one item I may avoid 2nd only to yeast in a recipe. Tomatillos are just so unfamiliar and alien. But then Cinco De Mayo came up and I thought I would conquer my fear of these things and try a simple recipe that called for them.

The recipe was a really big hit with everyone but my picky girl. Green sauce? Pass. But those willing to try a sauce with a very different green color were rewarded with a very bold blast of flavor.

I made a classic Mexican recipe that I found on the Epicurious Website: Soft Fried Tortillas with Tomatillo Salsa and Chicken. I made some changes, however. Cooked chicken? That’s all? No. We need a nice acidic marinade for chicken going into this dish. So, I came up with one.

Soft Fried Tortillas with Tomatillo Salsa and Grilled Marinated Chicken. It may look like a lot of steps, but there’s not much to any of the steps, if that makes sense.

For the marinaded chicken: combine all of the ingredients,except the chicken, in a gallon plastic storage bag. Close the bag and shake until combined. Add the chicken, close the bag, and massage the marinade on the chicken. Marinate for at least 2 hours. Grill over medium high heat, about 4-5 minutes per side or until cooked through to at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit.

For the tomatillo salsa: Combine the tomatillos, chiles, onions, garlic, salt and water in a blender or food processor. Pulse until relatively smooth. Heat the oil in a medium-large skillet over medium high heat. Add the salsa to the pan, taking care because the liquid will cause the oil to splatter. Bring the salsa to a simmer and cook until thickened, around 8-10 minutes. Stir in cilantro, cook for another minute and remove from heat. Cool, then refrigerate until ready to serve. May be made up to 2 days in advance.

For the Chalupas: Melt the oil over medium high heat in a heavy, large skillet. Place the tortillas in the heated oil (as many as will fit), and lightly fry for about 10 seconds on each side. The intent is to soften the tortillas, not really fry them. Remove the tortilla and drain on a paper towel. If not being used immediately, keep warm on a tray in the oven. When ready, spread with the salsa and top with the grilled chicken, crema and queso fresco.